Alán Carrasco’s solo show
A Soviet militiaman eats a McDonald’s hamburger in Moscow
ADN Galeria | Barcelona (ESP)
September 5th to September 28th, 2019
In 1976, during Montreal Olympic Games, McDonald’s Canadian franchise chairman George A. Cohon and Soviet Union Government representatives had a discreet meeting in order to come to a business agreement which was not possible until 10 years later. After Mikhail Gorbachev came to the Party’s general secretariat, and then the Presidency, the opening project for the first McDonald’s in soviet territory was reactivated. Thus, while Berlin Wall was falling or Nicolae Ceaușescu was being condemned to death in Târgoviște, years of planning were ending in Moscow, supply factories being constructed and new McDonald’s workers trained.
Finally, on January 31th 1990, the largest McDonald’s in the world was open at Pushkin Square, with a capital share of 49% in favour of McDonald’s and 51% in favour of the Soviet State. The Perestroika had come to stay and, under the enthusiasm for the offer of Western products, a new standardized world was hiding.
The end of the blocs period was closer than ever and the global capitalism hegemony, wild and deregulated, was rapidly expanded. A new order where technological changes on transports and communications have promoted a globalization out of control, a new order which increasingly locates the economic activity out of direct state’s control, unabashedly reinforcing the position of private power organized in big supranational corporations.
The pax americana has brought a capitalism with no limits and an enduring war.